Unsaid, Undone, Untouched
by alpha aquarii
Summary: Yuizaki Hiyono left so many things incomplete in regards to Narumi Ayumu, and now the woman who played her struggles to resolve them. Oneshot.


End spoilers for the manga.

Special thanks to pengiechan for beta-ing!

**u n s a i d , **_u n d o n e __**,**_** u n t o u c h e d**

If only he'd turn around. The wind whirling in the grove is so cold. Her tears freeze. His footsteps never break their rhythm.

If only he'd turn around, and see her desperately muffling her sobs, then maybe she'd be ruined in his eyes, but he'd at least stay a moment. Any moment laid bare between them without lies, is a moment she can burst open and tell him the things she's been keeping from him for months, and she's just wasted one.

A strict sense of business and a womanly pride kept her from it – but in his eyes, she's just a schoolgirl, and if only he'd turn around, she could spill those passions that transcend words and touch and all manner of communication. Even playing a god's creation, it's not like she could keep herself completely together and mechanical once she drowned in his cold, oddly beautiful logic, and of course Kiyotaka calculated that—

"It's too cruel, isn't it?"

Ahead, just leaving the shrine hidden in the woods, is Narumi-san's brother. He holds a book in one hand, a gun in the other. She clenches a hand at her mouth.

Kiyotaka comes closer. "I knew you'd end up destroyed like this from the beginning, and yet I pressed forward, like with so many others."

He doesn't look like a man defeated. She wants to tell him not to come any closer, but the timbre of his voice, so different than it is on the telephone articulating instructions, sounds so close to Narumi-san's. Soon he's only a step away from her, closer than Narumi-san had been, and only her hands clutching at her sobs guard her from him.

"If there's anything you wish to tell Ayumu…" he murmurs, "you can tell me. I'll let him know."

She wonders how Narumi-san will react if she does something as indirect as that. An apathetic gaze, an apathetic shrug? The same way he will react if she tells him in person, now that she considers it.

But this is Kiyotaka, and she still hasn't decided whether to forgive him or not. She steps backwards, covertly wipes her eyes, and bites the inside of her trembling mouth to steady it.

"As the person most special to Narumi-san… as Yuizaki Hiyono… I would be a coward to take such roundabout measures, wouldn't I?"

A slow smile comes to Kiyotaka's face. "Yes… it's good to know that there is at least one other person in this world who will always hold my little brother above me." He steps aside, then past her, slipping something into her hand. "Your last paycheck. I didn't expect to be able to give it to you in person. I'm thankful that there won't have to be any more."

She smiles too now, although Kiyotaka won't be able to see it. "You don't know how glad I am."

His footsteps fade, and like that he's gone, as if he knows she doesn't care for his goodbyes. She tucks the paycheck into her purse along with the earring, and just stands and shivers.

There is another reason why she turned Kiyotaka's offer down, and she knows it well. The hollow wind, the cold, open space of the grove all reflect it.

_I still don't know what I want to say._

**v**

A few hours later, she's decided.

Evening has fallen, and she's deep within a flower shop, wandering among its aisles and lost in its perfumes. Tomorrow morning she'll be gone from this country, but everything's been arranged long before, and her last few hours here might as well be spent dealing with this past.

She doesn't like the idea of being haunted by it on her next mission. There's so much she has to say – so many times when her actions were those of Yuizaki Hiyono, the girl who loved Narumi-san, not god's puppet, and she can't stand the fact that he'll think everything was planned to deceive him –

He has to know.

So she's going to confess the words that she still hasn't prepared. It's such a lackluster replacement for actually meeting with Narumi-san, but it's all she can do. A bouquet of flowers with an attached note, a gesture straddling the line between professional and personal, and then she'll be fleeing the country, fleeing from him.

As her eyes trace out roses, hydrangeas, carnations, she begins to compose the letter in her head.

_I truly felt at ease in our relationship. Towards the end, I began to wish that that role was real, because to me it seemed we fit our parts so perfectly. There were times when I couldn't help but take things farther than I had to – like with Kanone, remember? – because just being with you compelled me to, and I don't regret it. Really, I_

She stops. Suddenly, she feels lost, and grabs the edge of a shelf to keep her balance. Around her, there are irises, and their familiar scent fills her with a cold dread.

What is she doing? Those words don't sound anything like Hiyono's. It's not like she can put it into words.

_A handshake. "Try not to do anything reckless."_

_I was about to, wasn't I?_

She exits the shop quickly and keeps walking, all the way back to her apartment, still trapped within the irises' – within Kiyotaka's – scent. Perhaps it is better to leave things as they are, and not risk ruining what little dignity she has left in Narumi-san's eyes.

The plane leaves tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning, regret will be behind her.

The only thing to do now is survive the night.

**v**

Months later, the car radio bursts into a badly static-mangled piano sample. A voiceover, afflicted by the same crackling, stutters, "—don't miss—angel of the piano—tour—come to Ger—one week only, the—Eyes Rutherford!"

She starts.

The man at the driver's seat casts a glance at her. "_Was ist es?_"

She shakes her head, placing her hand demurely over his. "_Nichts._"

They arrive at the glitzy hotel just after midnight. She drips business in her actions and words until they check into their separate rooms – then, collapsed upon a rich bed, surrounded by views of the light-polluted Berlin sky, she turns on her laptop.

Eyes Rutherford. A link to that past. Seized by some unexplainable spontaneity, she books a ticket, then calls her boss.

"It's late," he grunts, and in response to his voice she can only think about how Kiyotaka never seemed to sleep.

"Sorry," she says. "I'd like to rearrange a few things."

The next night, instead of being cooped up in a lavish conference room, she finds herself in the front row of Eyes's concert.

_Benediction de Dieu dans la solitude_ never sounded so familiar.

He looks well, she thinks, secretly wondering if his quiet gaze over the audience ever brushed over her. In the poise of his fingers over the piano, in the ease of his stride, resides a calm acceptance devoid of self-pity yet brimming with emotion. She wonders if that's part of Narumi-san's influence.

…She hasn't thought about things like that for a long time.

At the close of the concert, inexplicably, she stands up during the applause. Soon, the whole front row stands with her, and she can hear countless others behind them do the same. And for a moment Eyes's gaze sweeps down and meets hers. That mutual electricity – the slightest part in his firm lips, the slightest curve in hers – stirs a nostalgia in her long buried.

This isn't enough, she realizes. Just seeing Eyes and remembering the past isn't enough. So she follows the crowd to the signing of autographs, and stands patiently in line. With nothing else to occupy her hands, she finds herself braiding her hair.

When it's her turn, she drops an iris instead of a piece of paper into his hand. His eyes trace the bloom of the flower up its sprightly stem, to her arm and all the way to her face, framed by that familiar hairstyle. His expression never changes.

"I was wondering if we could talk sometime." She smiles; it comes easily somehow. "Anytime you're free."

Not an hour later, he finds her waiting on the steps of the deserted concert hall. They walk; she leads him through Berlin and he follows. She asks him about a number of questions related to the Blade Children, laughs as much as she did back when she was Yuizaki Hiyono, and feels a strange rush of affection for Eyes as he nods, answers tersely, and follows her through the night.

Unconsciously, she's still playing Kiyotaka's role. So inevitably she asks, "How's Narumi-san?"

Eyes looks directly at her. Her breath catches. It's as if he knows that that was the only question she meant to ask the entire night.

"Still holding up, it seems." An expression of peace steals across his face. "After all, I'm still here and whole, aren't I?"

She nods, and they share smiles.

The night ends as it must, with both of them back at the concert hall. Eyes leans against a gothic pillar and she stares at him unabashedly, still clinging to something she can't pinpoint.

"You should go see him."

She's been hoping to hear something like that. "Do you think…?"

"I don't think his opinion of you has changed just because of what Kiyotaka did."

"I guess not." She smiles, ready to say her goodbyes, but then Eyes speaks again.

"He might even be waiting for you to say something."

She wonders. Maybe so. The night air fills her with something akin to hope. And Eyes, as stoically and sensitively as ever, has renewed that need in her that has slept for months – that need for closure that she feared would never be filled.

Eyes's cell phone rings. He promises the caller that he'll be there right away, and then looks pointedly at her once he hangs up. "I didn't think we'd meet again, least of all somewhere like this."

"Me neither." She plays with a thick braid. Half-jokingly, she says, "Maybe it's fate."

"Fate's what you make… that's what Narumi-otouto made me believe." He leaves her as easily as they met that night, and she lingers by the concert hall for a few minutes after.

Next time she meets Narumi-san, whether it's with words or actions or something else entirely, she'll be ready.

**v**

She's ready.

It's a year later, inside a hospital room so spacious and empty that it begs to be filled with talk or music. If she's lucky, she might be able to hear both today.

Although there's not a lot of time left, although she has to flee from the country and from him again, it won't be without him knowing.

She gives back the earring and takes a breath, ready to spill, burst, break open under his calm gaze, and apologize, wish, remember, beg, blame, cry, grasp—

"Want to hear a song?"

Caught off guard, she says yes and listens.

He places a hand, just one, on the piano keys, and fills the room with music. She shakes. The piece is so beautiful that she shakes, and the boy is so much more beautiful that something above wonder possesses her. In the tenderness of the song, she hears the spilling, bursting, and breaking open of her soul that she was about to instigate reflected back at her in an infinitely more refined and perfect manner. All unsaid words, undone actions, and untouched embraces echo from his fingers to her heart.

When the piece ends, she collapses onto the bed on her knees, not a hand's length away from him. Somehow, tears fill her eyes.

_What was it I was going to say? _

He's predicted it, stolen it, and written it into his song. Now he turns around and looks at her, raising an eyebrow at her tears.

"What is it?"

She stares at him, that limp left arm, that thinned face, and feels an immeasurable longing for something unrecoverable.

"I wish it had been real," she whispers, daring not to touch him, "every time we were together except the last."

He smiles faintly, and waits for her tears to run their course. "It's real right now, isn't it?"

_Is it? _

He looks so familiar, and though she's wearing high heels and a business jacket, she can just imagine the both of them in school uniforms, side by side on the roof. The longer she looks in his eyes, the more she can believe that even without that setting, those clothes… it's the same. There's no difference in the way he regards her.

There's no reason to apologize, wish, remember, beg, blame, cry, or grasp, because he knows.

She opens her mouth and laughs. "I'm so glad, Narumi-san."

He nods. Some moments pass; she'll treasure them. Soon enough she's walking out, but it's not with regret or bitterness or any of those things. Not even when she sees Kiyotaka and his wife again, not when she boards the plane and leaves Narumi-san again.

She thinks that he's a cruel man for knowing and stealing her feelings like that, leaving her to wonder over the years. And yet, she's filled with a relief beyond any words, actions, or embraces, because, now and even before—

_He knows_.

/end.

The reveal at the end of the manga made me feel like Ayumu and Hiyono's previous interactions had become worthless. This is my attempt to reconcile the truth with how their relationship had been previously portrayed.

Thank you for reading; please leave your thoughts!


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